Ha! Eating local in Canada in October? We're nuts!
After our first meeting, I came home to size things up - to tally up the local food I already had. I checked the fruit bowl and found a dried up old kiwi and a lollipop. Do Kiwis grow in the Toronto area? Southern Ontario? Within a 500 Km radius? Anywhere in Canada? Wiki tells me the closest place that exported Kiwifruit in 2005 is eight little red dots in the North Eastern US - that's kinda close, no? Great. No luck there.
It did make me think about what our definition of local should be. I see it in two ways: the real way, and the "what if" way.
The real way, oddly enough, is more ideal. It's simple - we make the best possible choice. I don't want to make my crazy life more crazy than it already is. I'm not going to scour the streets looking for an independent supermarket that just happens to have a supplier from Milton who just happens to have just happened across a genus of banana that likes frost. Take the lobster example that came up in our discussions - Davin pointed out that the lobster in our markets comes from the Maritimes or the Caribbean. Choose Maritimes. It's about choices you make in your everyday life to support local farms. Make the extra effort to find what you consider to be local. If you can't get a hen to lay an egg in Parkdale, then I'm sure there's a chicken somewhere within a few dozen kilometres of Toronto who will be happy to plop one out for you. This is why we came up with the 50% rule - knowing that there's no way you're gonna find locally grown pineapple, but hoping you'll make an effort to chose Canada over Chile for that pineapple-apple pie.
Now for the "what if" scenario. What if we ran out of oil? Teleportation aside, how far could we go to get our food? I'm so out of shape I can't ride a bike in Toronto unless I'm going South. I'd be left eating crab apples off my neighbour's tree. The "what if" scenario is the extreme version of "local" and I hope it doesn't come to that 'cause there's only so many Pork Chops with Apple-Raisin Relish that I can handle.
I wonder where they made the lollipop?
(Stay tuned for next week, when you find out what's in my freezer and I share my friend's yummy October Soup recipe.)
After our first meeting, I came home to size things up - to tally up the local food I already had. I checked the fruit bowl and found a dried up old kiwi and a lollipop. Do Kiwis grow in the Toronto area? Southern Ontario? Within a 500 Km radius? Anywhere in Canada? Wiki tells me the closest place that exported Kiwifruit in 2005 is eight little red dots in the North Eastern US - that's kinda close, no? Great. No luck there.
It did make me think about what our definition of local should be. I see it in two ways: the real way, and the "what if" way.
The real way, oddly enough, is more ideal. It's simple - we make the best possible choice. I don't want to make my crazy life more crazy than it already is. I'm not going to scour the streets looking for an independent supermarket that just happens to have a supplier from Milton who just happens to have just happened across a genus of banana that likes frost. Take the lobster example that came up in our discussions - Davin pointed out that the lobster in our markets comes from the Maritimes or the Caribbean. Choose Maritimes. It's about choices you make in your everyday life to support local farms. Make the extra effort to find what you consider to be local. If you can't get a hen to lay an egg in Parkdale, then I'm sure there's a chicken somewhere within a few dozen kilometres of Toronto who will be happy to plop one out for you. This is why we came up with the 50% rule - knowing that there's no way you're gonna find locally grown pineapple, but hoping you'll make an effort to chose Canada over Chile for that pineapple-apple pie.
Now for the "what if" scenario. What if we ran out of oil? Teleportation aside, how far could we go to get our food? I'm so out of shape I can't ride a bike in Toronto unless I'm going South. I'd be left eating crab apples off my neighbour's tree. The "what if" scenario is the extreme version of "local" and I hope it doesn't come to that 'cause there's only so many Pork Chops with Apple-Raisin Relish that I can handle.
I wonder where they made the lollipop?
(Stay tuned for next week, when you find out what's in my freezer and I share my friend's yummy October Soup recipe.)
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